Using Beaver on Multiple Devices

You can use your Beaver account with any Zotero installation. What is separated across devices is your chat history. Beaver remembers which Zotero installation each chat was created in and shows you the chats that belong to the Zotero you are currently using.

This seperation is important because your chats include reference to specific items in your Zotero library. If you use Beaver on a different Zotero installation that is not synced with the other devices, citations may not work correctly, library changes may not apply and in the worst case apply to the wrong items.

Still, nothing is hidden permanently. You can always choose to show all chats and open them after confirming that you want to do so.

This changed in Beaver 0.22.4

Earlier versions linked your Beaver account to one specific Zotero installation and required you to authorize each new device. If you still see a "New Device Detected" page or an error about your Zotero instance not being linked, update the Beaver plugin.

How Chat History Works Across Devices

When you start a chat, Beaver links it to the Zotero instance and Zotero account ID you are using. These chats will be visible on all devices that match either the Zotero instance or the Zotero account ID. That means you can see the same chats on multiple devices if you use Zotero Sync on these devices. Consider these scenarios:

  • With Zotero Sync enabled on all your devices, all of your chats show up everywhere. Your devices share one Zotero account ID.
  • Without Zotero Sync, each Zotero installation only shows the chats created in it, because there is nothing tying the installations together.
  • A different Zotero account or a separate Zotero profile gets its own chat history.

Showing chats from other Zotero profiles

When chats are hidden, the chat list tells you so at the bottom:

3 chats from other Zotero profiles are hidden · Show all

Click Show all to see everything. Chats from elsewhere are marked with an Other Zotero profile badge, and an All profiles chip appears at the top of the list. Click its x to go back to just this profile's chats.

The Recent Chats list in the sidebar always shows only the current Zotero's chats. Use the full chat list to see everything.

Opening a chat from another Zotero profile

Beaver asks for confirmation first:

This chat was created with a different Zotero account or database. Cited items and links may not work here. Any library changes like editing metadata, adding PDF annotations, or organizing items may not apply or even change the incorrect Zotero items.

This is worth taking seriously. Item references in an old chat point at items in the library it was created against. In a different Zotero database, those references may resolve to nothing — or, in rare cases, to a different item. Reading such a chat is safe; asking Beaver to act on the library from inside it is not.

Beaver only asks once per chat per session.

Turning on Zotero Sync later

Chats you created before enabling Zotero Sync only carry the installation ID, so they would stay invisible on your other devices. The first time Beaver sees your Zotero account ID after you sign in to Zotero Sync, it automatically attaches that account ID to those chats so they appear on your other synced devices. This happens in the background and needs no action from you.

If something doesn't look right, contact support with a description of your issue.